How to Minimize Your Kids’ Closet

This one was a game changer for me. Full disclosure, I am fine with doing laundry but I whine like a little infant when I have to fold it and put it away. If you’ve ever seen the first episode of Tidying Up with Marie Kondo on Netflix, you may have watched the young married couple who worked the KonMari system after admitting that their stuff has gotten out of control.

Rachel, who works as a stay-at-home mom, had hired someone to come in and do their family’s laundry because it, to her, was the most odious of tasks. People all over the InterWebs gave her flack for it. What I wanted to tell her is that I completely understand.

It feels weird that I wouldn’t hire someone I didn’t know intimately to come in and watch my kids but I would hire someone I’d never met to come in and do the laundry. Weird but true. My mom hired out for just this task of washing, folding, and putting away laundry when I was growing up but I knew, considering our income, that it probably wasn’t in the cards for me and my family. That and I have fond memories of our laundress complaining about all of our clothes…

My frustration with laundry came to a head this last week when, after carrying four armfuls of laundry up the stairs, I decided to send this carefully-worded text to my husband who was at work and he answered on his break:

Touché, Husband. Touché.

He does do all the things he listed. We share all but the repairs, sweeping, and cobwebs. I am thus far inept at repairs, I hate sweeping, and I didn’t know about all the cobwebs, ick. I take on the tasks my husband doesn’t like that I don’t mind doing such as cooking, tidying all the little things, most of the budgeting. We still do a monthly budget together but I take on the day-to-day stuff because it gives me a little thrill to run the numbers. I also plan most of the girls’ activities. I think I just get annoyed at how gendered our chores can be sometimes. However, you don’t see me YouTube-ing home repairs or revving up the lawn mower or snowblower either.

We have a pretty fair system, considering. Still, we are looking further into it this week.

Anyways, petty marital arguments aside, doing laundry is a pain. So, one way I deal with it is to have less of it. Here is my method for paring down the kids’ clothes:

So, now that you’ve rushed off to do just this task, you might find that there is still much more to address in that pesky closet.

What to Do with Non-Clothes Items

I take a pretty hard line here but you don’t have to. Here are the things I “allow” in my kids’ closet for now.

Diapers

Wipes

Piggy banks

A bucket full of dress-up clothes

Two science-y games on the top shelf

So until my three year old gives up the fight against potty training, this is my list. Yours can be longer or shorter depending on what works for you. My personal philosophy is that I don’t want any surprises like my mom had with the linen closet. More on that next post.

If you feel like you want to do more but with your closet, feel free to check out my post on our bedroom closet.